Autodesk acquires Lagoa for cloud visualization platform

For the second time Autodesk has turned to Brazilian Thiago Costa to jumpstart its visualization.

Autodesk is acquiring Lagoa, maker of a cloud-based visualization and collaboration platform for product development. Autodesk is not commenting, but sources contacted by both GraphicSpeak and other tech news sites confirm the deal. The purchase price is approximately $60 million.

Lagoa has been rapidly building out an online rendering and real-time visualization platform, and struck early partnership deals with SpaceClaim (since acquired by Ansys) and GrabCAD (since acquired by Stratasys). Earlier this year it started showing a “technology preview” of a new cloud-based MCAD tool based on the Parasolid 3D modeling kernel from Siemens PLM. The Lagoa Assembly Engine has built-in kinematics, and works interactively with the Lagoa visualization service. It relies on WebGL, meaning it works in the browser without a custom app. Until the release of iOS 8, it also meant Lagoa technology would not run on iPad or iPhone, but the latest operating system update solved that problem.